Despite the G.P.O.'s best efforts with the newsletter, an audience of
48 members and guests assembled in winter woollies to hear Mrs. Janice
Farquharson's lecture entitled "Front-Line Experiences of Poets on the
Western Front, 1914/1918". Having explained how a holiday visit to battlefield
sites lead to a doctoral thesis still in the making, she held the floor for
almost two hours while describing aspects of the First World War from an
entirely novel angle. The British Press were heavily muzzled and the public
were given only those impressions which would reinforce their patriotism
and their faith in their military might, particularly at sea. No news at all
was forthcoming from the B.E.F. and public poetry portraying an idealised,
ultra-heroic British soldier and his clearly identifiable friend, the Belgian,
fighting an equally well defined enemy, the German, filled the newspapers as a
result.

The British public therefore had no inkling of the real conditions
on the Western Front, but this ended abruptly when The Times printed a report
by an eye-witness detailing a retreat of Allied forces, and stated its willingness
to publish articles, news and poems by soldiers in the front line of battle.
This probably contributed to the general feeling today that noticeably many
poets were active during this conflict, although it must be realised that among
the vast number of young men who were killed in the Great War, Britain lost
almost an entire generation of intellectuals.

While many of the audience were lost when it came to the poetry itself,
the slide show was magnificent. The aerial photographs of Paschendaele
before and after shelling (reminiscent of a lunar surface) were particularly
impressive while the slide of a skull of an unburied corpse still in uniform
stared out over the intervening years to impart an empty feeling of the horror
of the War to us all. This was offset by the tranquillity now evident from
slides of these erstwhile battlefields.

Norman Clothier, himself a poet in W.W.2., thanked Mrs Farquharson on
behalf of the Society.
(JM)

* * *

Future meetings: Johannesburg

9th July - 20h00 - Mr Peter Fox - "Airborne Lifeline - Role of the Royal Air
Force over Burma, 1942/45"

Mr Peter Fox was an officer in the R.A.F. serving as an Air Liason
Officer with the 14th Army Burma during this period and hence his first
hand experiences and reminiscinces about this aspect of the war should
prove most interesting.

13th August - 20h00 - Maj D.Hall - "At the Call of King and Country - An Infantry
Subaltern on the Western Front, 1917"

Mrs Lander will relate how in 1942 she and her baby son were taken from
their home in Manila, the Philippines, and spent the next three years
along with more than 4 300 others in a Japanese P.O.W. camp.

13th August - 20h00 - To be announced

* * *

Late arrival of the newsletter.
Occasionally it happens that I do not manage to write the nevsletter
in time for all members to receive it before the lecture for that month. For
this reason I announce meetings one month ahead as well as for the current
month and ask members to diarise the dates.